


Vitals

by say_im_good



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Bonding, Character Growth, Discrimination, Eating Disorders, M/M, Mental Hospital, Mental Illness, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, TRIGGERS COME AFTER THIS, aka the characters will date each other, hyunjin centric fic, mild violence, psych hospital fic, really deep talking about really hard topics, ships will sail later on, this is pretty much just a copy paste of combining my psych hospital experiences together, vent fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:21:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22030000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/say_im_good/pseuds/say_im_good
Summary: He remembered getting here the same way that he remembered the movie he half slept through last week. The recollection was in segments, and none if it was from his own perspective. He remembered popping each pill one by one as if snacking, and then, within a blink, he was being driven to the hospital, tears sticky on his cheeks, feeling more anxious about potentially living than about having tried to die.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 38





	1. Author Note

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: Suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts and actions
> 
> Hello! Please read all of the tags before beginning to read this story! It deals with a lot of harsh topics! Thank you! <3
> 
> Also if you're reading my other fic, I'm not abandoning it for this one! I'm going to be writing both simultaneously!~

THIS IS JUST A NOTE CHAPTER. PLEASE GO TO THE NEXT CHAPTER FOR THE START OF THE STORY!

This fic is very personal to me. It's going through a lot of my own experiences and the characters are either representing myself or people I have met. Please understand if my writing isn't as fluid as it usually is because tbh it's really emotional writing this so far. It's something I'm using to vent. I think that it'll be helpful for me and hope that it can be helpful to someone else as well. I know a lot of people struggle like I do, so I'll be honest. What I'm going into with this fic isn't another one of those 'psych wards everyone's psycho but its fun!' sort of things. This is real, this is raw, and this is what I've been through and experienced and seen other people I'm close to struggle with. This fic is reaching out to those struggles in people who can relate to the characters. 

I'm not writing this to be edgy, I'm not writing this to be controversial, I'm writing this to vent and to hopefully be a place for someone reading to be able to vent.

I'm here for you. We're all struggling a lot, and no one's struggles are worse than or better than someone else's. 

I hope this fic can kind of make that point on its own. 

Thank you for reading!


	2. Numb

It wasn’t really planned. In fact, it wasn’t planned at all. Hyunjin had gotten back from Chan’s house in the early morning after spending the night there. He’d felt unsettled for days, but just the past few hours brought a wave of something he wanted to repress. It was a hollow feeling, deep and thick, the same suffocating anxiety that he got when he was in a cramped space, or when he was in complete darkness. It followed him the entire night, and he couldn’t focus on his friend’s homework that he was supposed to be helping with, he couldn’t sleep even after Chan had passed out, and he ended up driving himself back somehow without being able to recall doing so. By the time he’d fallen onto his bed, the rational mind keeping the thought at bay flicked off like a switch. 

He’d thought of suicide more than he could count by now, but he’d never attempted it. Never would, or so he thought, even sitting there on his bed the day that he did it. He was too scared of the hell that his parents taught him to believe in, too scared that it was real and that he would suffer for longer, for eternity, if he tried to end the suffering he was experiencing now. What that was… well. He drew a blank. 

His life was fine. Everything was normal. His roommates got along, Chan was the best friend he could ever ask for, he had a good life. Why he would just… crash, he had no idea, but it would come in waves, each one hitting harder than the last when he was less and less prepared for them to slam into him. And sitting there on his bed in that moment of static tension, he realized that these waves would never stopped coming. There would always be another one, pressing and pressing until he couldn’t hold himself above the water anymore. 

Blink. 

He was now sitting at his desk, his mood stabilizers spilled out onto the slick wood. He didn’t have the mind to count how many pills were in front of him. It looked like less than when they were crowded in the little bottle they came in. He took one between his fingers, stared at it, examined each groove and the little etching in the middle. He brought it to his lips and swallowed it. 

Easy. 

He took one more. Then another. Then another. He stared at the blank wall and picked up each pill one by one, popping it between his lips and swallowing. It was automatic, repetitive, mindless. He counted them as they went down. Five. Seven. Thirteen. Eighteen. 

At eighteen, that conscious part of his brain flickered back to life. He didn’t know what turned it off, he didn’t know what turned it back on, but suddenly, it hit him that he’d just downed eighteen pills in less than a few minutes, eighteen pills that were supposed to last him an entire day with just one. 

Hyunjin blinked. He didn’t feel scared. A little anxious, yeah, but that was rational given the circumstances. He quickly screwed the bottle shut with the remaining pills and tossed it across the room where it wouldn’t be easily accessible if he fell back into that blank mindset again. 

He swallowed. What was he going to do? His mind was blank and there was no drive to do anything. He grabbed for his phone with a trembling hand. He’d scroll through instagram or something. Just… scroll until he felt something happening. 

Two minutes, he figured, had passed. It was something akin to a miracle, if it wasn’t so ironically against what he wanted. His mom texted him, ‘How are you doing?’ 

And the wave slammed hard. He choked on a sob he was positive hadn’t been there a second ago, biting into his hand to keep quiet as the hand holding his phone began to tremble more violently. Mom. He had to say goodbye somehow, he couldn’t just… just vanish. 

‘I’m okay,’ he typed back, hiccuping as he tried to stay quiet. His brother was in the living room just beyond his door, he didn’t want anyone hearing him crying like this. 

He sobbed. She was typing but he didn’t wait. There wasn’t much time to wait, right? How fast would these pills kill him? Did he even want to die? 

‘I love you’ he typed, hitting send quickly and almost dropping his phone in the process. She stopped typing. 

His heart jumped out of his chest when his phone began to buzz. 

‘Mom’ appeared on the caller ID, and Hyunjin curled into himself, covering his mouth with both of his hands to keep silent because fuck this was too much. He shouldn’t have even responded. He shouldn’t respond now, but he couldn’t just… just not answer and then die, and did he even want to die?

Did he even want to die? He was going to die. He was shaking as he grabbed his phone on the third ring and swiped it to answer. 

“Hyunjin, baby, I know you’re probably just waking up but I wanted to tell you about-” 

She sounded so excited. He didn’t know why. He’d never know why if he died.

How would she feel if he died? She would break. He knew it already. 

How would Chan feel? Knowing his best friend went home and killed himself after hanging out with him? He’d fall apart. 

How would Kkami feel? Kkami who no one wanted to feed when Hyunjin wasn’t home? Would anyone take care of him? 

“Mom, I messed up,” he sobbed. She paused, and he could feel her confusion, her worry, from across the line. 

“What’s wrong, baby? What did you mess up?” 

He sucked in a breath. His choice was already made. He didn’t want to die.

“I took a bunch of pills. Like a lot,” he cried. “And now I don’t know what to do.” His words slurred into something unintelligible towards the end. She gasped. 

“Hyunjin, I’m on my way. Okay? I’m on my way there, so just… just… Is your brother home?” 

“Yeah,” he whimpered. He didn’t want to tell his brother, his brother who he barely believed gave a single shit about him in the first place.

“Baby I need you to tell him to take you to the hospital. I’m twenty minutes away, it’ll be faster. Can you do that?” 

“Yeah,” he breathed. It was too much. Why did he do something so stupid? Was he really going to die over this? 

She told him to stay on the line. His legs were jelly as he stood, walking to his door, he twisted the doorknob and pressed. His brother was playing a game. He’d be inconvenienced by this. Kkami was asleep on the couch. Seeing his puppy there, Hyunjin almost started crying again. 

He took slow steps to his brother, tapping him on the shoulder. The elder sighed, taking off his headphones and turning to look at Hyunjin, blinking when he noticed the state of the younger’s wet, blotchy face. 

“I took a bunch of pills,” Hyunjin blurted out, shaky and disoriented. “Mom wants to know if you can take me to the hospital.” 

His brother sighed. 

“Why did you do that?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm ending this chapter here because I feel like it'll get way too long if I don't separate it into two. Thank you for reading!


End file.
